Dr. Colby Moorberg is recognized for his work on the Soils Laboratory Manual, an open-source laboratory manual used in his AGRON 305 – Soils course. By developing and adopting the manual, K-State students collectively saved $12,400 each semester or $62,000 in total since the fall 2015 semester.

In order to extend the benefits of the Soils Laboratory Manual to students outside of the K-State community, Dr. Moorberg and his co-author, Dr. David Crouse, published the manual with New Prairie Press (NPP), the K-State's open access scholarly publisher. Results from a survey of students using the manual were published in the open access peer-reviewed article, “An Open-Source Laboratory Manual for Introductory, Undergraduate Soil Science Courses” in the journal Natural Sciences Education. The article was downloaded 351 times in six weeks and was featured in research highlight in the October issue of CSA News.

The instructor’s version and all ancillary materials have been made available through Open Soil Science, a website developed by Dr. Moorberg and Dr. Crouse to disseminate open educational resources for soil science education. Thus far, teachers from 25 different institutions of higher education have accessed the materials for use in their own classrooms.

The faculty in the Department of Chemistry (Dr. Yasmin Patell, Dr. Laura Fox, Dr. Christer Aakeroy, Dr. Paul Smith, and YiFen Li) flipped to an OpenStax textbook this year as awardees of the Open/Alternative Textbook Initiative and are recognized for their efforts. This change resulted in an astonishing $300,000 in student savings each year. We applaud their decision especially in light of the offer they received from a commercial publisher.

3. K-State Department of Physics

The Department of Physics is recognized for several Open Access (OA) activities. Instead of charging students for lab manuals, they used online versions. Physics 113/114, a two-semester introductory sequence for students in life science majors or programs, reduced student costs by using a free textbook from OpenStax; and Physics 106 used a free textbook since 2007.

4. Dr. James (Jim) Edgar, Department Head and University Distinguished Professor.

Dr. James Edgar is recognized for his steadfast commitment to open access for many years. He contributed regularly to the K-State Research Exchange (K-REx), K-State’s digital repository, where works are discovered and read all over the world. He requested that 10 of his research articles be added to K-REx in the last two years. In total, he had 35 of his works in K-REx.

5. Dr. April Mason, Provost and Senior Vice President.

Provost Dr. April Mason has showed continued support of OA since signing the Berlin Declaration, including most recently with financial support for the K-State Open Access Publishing Fund (KOAPF). Dr. Mason’s support for open access this year alone had helped over 20 K-State authors publish their articles in OA journals. We will be sad to lose her support as she retires this year and want to recognize her here for her efforts.

6. Dr. Rumela Bhadra, Research Associate.

Dr. Rumela Bhadra is recognized as having an incredible passion for sharing her work with the world. Not only did she share extensively through her own academic social media profiles, but she was a prolific contributor to K-Rex, with 24 works included. In 2017 she played a vital part in bringing the annual reports for K-State’s Feed the Future Innovation Lab for the Reduction of Post-Harvest Loss into K-REx.

7. Dr. Katsura Asano, Division of Biology faculty.

An open access author and awardee for the KOAPF in both FY17 and FY18, Dr. Katsura Asano was an outspoken advocate for continued support of the KOAPF and we recognize him for these actions. Faculty members like Dr. Asano who regularly publish their research in open access journals ensure that the digital scholarship produced at K-State can be consumed and used to further research in their discipline. The impact of these actions will only continue to grow as further development happens in the field.

Dr. Suzanne Porath migrated the Networks journal to NPP in 2017. She has been an outspoken advocate of NPP and OA and has promoted NPP to other journal editors. She also won an award from the Open/Alternative Textbook Initiative for EDEL411. Being an advocate for OA in all fronts we recognized these efforts.

This journal had produced the number one downloaded OA item. “Factors Related to Financial Stress among College Students” reminded us of the importance of open access in student’s success. This article had been the number one downloaded item for almost every day since its publication. Looking at the readership of this journal’s OA content we saw that this material was being used at educational institutions all over the world and we recognized her locally for her work.

As the dean of the College of Education Dr. Debbie Mercer strongly supported open access in her college. Through the support of a student supported open access journal, Prairie Journal of Educational Research (PJER), to the college-wide e-text initiative. In addition to support, the dean put her money where her mouth was and offered $1,000 awards to her faculty to encourage faculty developed e-texts. This college embraced open access and they stated in a recent report on their college’s initiative that “Not even one of the instructors or students interviewed for this study suggested that the COE should stop supporting its e-text initiative.”

Andy Bennet, Professor in Mathematics, and Brian Lindshield, Associate Professor in Nutritional SciencesSupporting open/alternative course adoptions since 2013 and both use open/alternative resources in their own courses.

Yunjeong Kim, Research Assistant Professor in Diagnostic Medicine and PathobiologyPublished open access in 2016 with library support. Her research article on a potential cure for a virus found in cats has been downloaded over 40,000 times.

Bradley Olson, Assistant Professor in BiologyPublished open access in 2016 with library support. The article uncovers a link between pathway and first steps toward multicellular organisms.

In response to the discovery that the Ebola virus outbreak may have been prevented from open access to this research and the recent virus outbreak spreading, dozens of leading journals and funding agencies have released content containing Zika research open access.

Richard Wilder, Associate General Counsel for the Gates Foundation, during the 2016 SPARC MORE conference stated “As we have tried to drive to more openness and sharing of published materials and data, we have been able to draw in a wider range of actors into our work and make available to them the grist for the mill….and as we drive forward with open access to data, I think we are going to see even more evidence of that.” (SPARC 2016). The Gates foundation has emerged with an open access policy requiring immediate release of grant funded publications and underlying data. The foundation has committed to paying necessary fees associated with this to ensure compliance. Going forward the foundation will focus on health, including ending the malaria epidemic and reducing preventable deaths in children under five.

+ Actions you can take in becoming more open

Actions you can take in becoming more open

Sign petition or self-contract to publish all of your works open access.

Use contract addendums with publishers to secure your right to archive your work open access.

Implement an open access policy in your department or school.

Start a discussion on journal’s subscription costs or article processing charges and if the journal could be open access.

Educate your peers on open access and how scholarly publishing is changing.